Review of Oliver & Company (1988) by Jose Miguel G — 09 May 2016

This retelling of Oliver Twist with cats and dogs from the time of the great creative and financial drought the animation house suffered in the 80's is,of course, decidedly lesser Disney. The animation is sometimes a bit below par, especially background stuff, the songs are pretty odd actually, aside from the clear standout "Why should I worry" that gives us a "Billy Joel as a dog" musical number (complete with sunglasses) everything else is really half assed, with not only poor lyrics but with the songs sometimes seemingly half finished ("Streets Of Gold" comes in like a big bolshy showstopper but is over by the times it's begun) and the plot is so thin and underfed that little kitten Oliver has barely settled into the dog gang by the time he is whisked away to a life of potential richness, and then back again, it's a paint by numbers in the extreme of the Dickens tale.

Characters too are all given short shrift, Joel's Dodger particularly is given only enough space to come off as a bit of a self centered cock rather than the lovable scamp he was clearly intended to be, shame, like I say it's fun to see the singer as an animated dog version of himself.

But Olver And Company is still warm and fun and very watchable, lower down the bottom of the rung of Disney animated studios but still solid and entertaining. As a side note, the bad guys get really surprisingly nasty deaths!